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D.I.T. Wikia:FAQ
Hello, and welcome to the D.I.T. FAQ page. Although we try to make our encyclopedia as user-friendly for our readers and editors as we can, D.I.T. Wikia remains as complex a system of technical and political processes any other wiki that can be confusing for many people who are not familiar with how a wiki works. So, chances are, you have some questions, and that's great! We hope the following page will be able to quickly answer some of them for you. If you still don't see an answer to your question, please feel free to drop us a line. General questions What is D.I.T. Wikia? : D.I.T. Wikia is a free content, freely editable online encyclopedia about everything D.I.T.-related. Who owns D.I.T. Wikia? : D.I.T. Wikia is hosted by Wikia, a free wiki hosting service operated by Wikia, Inc., a for-profit organization founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Wikia receives all profit from the Google AdSense advertisements. Wikia is responsible for technical issues with the site; it also sometimes provides legal advice and is our legal Designated Agent. When was D.I.T. Wikia created? : D.I.T. Wikia was started by Beethoven4ever in 2015 as a project that would provide a more complete coverage of the D.I.T. universe than Wikipedia was allowed to. For example, almost every character on D.I.T. Wikia has a separate article, while on Wikipedia, minor characters are grouped into long "List of minor characters" articles. A smaller wiki is also easier to manage, customize and verify (when it comes to factual accuracy and canonicity). : Our first articles were forked from Wikipedia, although most articles have since been completely rewritten to the point that almost no Wikipedia material remains as of now, and the material that does remain mostly constitutes imported policies and guidelines. Who is responsible for the D.I.T. Wikia content? : You are! In fact, you can edit this very FAQ! However, note that since D.I.T. Wikia is an unofficial, community-driven project, we cannot possibly guarantee any degree of accuracy and validity, although we do strive for both accuracy and verifiability — this means that everyone should be able to verify the facts mentioned in every article. This is why all in-universe articles have lists of appearances and sources, and why all real-world articles are referenced. : You can find who contributed to a particular article by looking at its edit history. What keeps D.I.T. Wikia from being destroyed? : Every D.I.T. Wikia article contains an edit history (accessible from the "history" tab by default), which records all edits to the article since it was created. In case someone makes a bad edit (intentionally or not) by vandalizing the article or inserting fanon, anyone can revert (restore) the article to an earlier, better revision. Are articles about "The Super Babies" allowed, since it has its own wiki? Yes. Events are allowed based on their significance. Minor skirmishes and flashbacks do not count. Characters count if they are in more than three books in the series. Legal questions Is D.I.T. Wikia copyrighted? : Yes, all contributions are copyrighted by the people who made them. This means that if you edit an article, you hold copyright for the edits you made, but not for edits made by other people contributing to the same article. : The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which we use, leverages the legal institute of copyright to ensure that everyone will have the right to freely access, modify and redistribute licensed content, no matter what. Therefore, do not contribute if you do not want your edits to be in turn mercilessly edited by others. Can I use D.I.T. Wikia content on my site/elsewhere? : Yes! However, this only applies to the text, licensed under the CC-BY-SA, and a select few free images. Most of our images are copyrighted and used under the fair use clause for identification purposes, and using them for other purposes or in countries where fair use conditions do not apply may be illegal. : If you use D.I.T. Wikia articles elsewhere, all you are legally required to do (by the license) is to add a copyright notice saying that the article is copyrighted and licensed under the CC-BY-SA, and a link to the original D.I.T. Wikia article. You can freely modify and redistribute the material, provided that you license your modifications under the CC-BY-SA as well. You cannot license it on other conditions or put it in the public domain, nor can you claim copyright for content you did not write yourself (everyone only holds copyright to the contributions they themselves made). Can I use D.I.T. Wikia content on another wiki? :Yes, if the said wiki is itself licensed under the CC-BY-SA. This includes almost all of Wikia (with the exception of Memory Alpha, Uncyclopedia, and a small number of other wikis that are licensed under other incompatible licenses) and most Wikimedia Foundation projects, including Wikipedia. In this case, the aforementioned copyright notice goes to the talk page of the said article; the restrictions still apply. Can I use content from other sites on D.I.T. Wikia? :No. By default, every work is copyrighted and the author holds exclusive rights to it, unless they explicitly release all or some of them. You can insert CC-BY-SA or public domain text into articles verbatim, but not anything else. Technical questions What wiki software does D.I.T. Wikia use? : D.I.T. Wikia (and the rest of Wikia) uses MediaWiki, the same software as Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. Wikia also uses some third-party extensions, which are available to all hosted wikis. Do I have to register? : While registration is optional, it is strongly recommended. You can view and edit pages as an anonymous user, but registration hides your IP address and gives you the ability to upload files, earn badges, move (rename) pages, and edit so-called semi-protected pages (after a few days). : Most importantly, registration gives you an identity and makes you a full-fledged member of the D.I.T. Wikia community. After you register and make your first edit, another user will usually greet you on your talk page and give links to some useful information pages. Registration is the first step in earning reputation and respect, and who knows, maybe one day you will be nominated for an administrator! What are namespaces? : Namespaces are large "storages" that group pages according to their function. Placing a page in a namespace causes the MediaWiki software to treat it in a special way. For example, this page is in the D.I.T. Wikia namespace, according to its prefix (D.I.T. Wikia:FAQ). Every namespace except Special (whose pages are generated by scripts on the fly, rather than being stored in the database) has an appropriate talk namespace, unless it is itself a talk namespace. Only the Wikia staff can add or remove namespaces or special pages. Neither regular users nor administrators can do that. The forum namespace is the only custom namespace so far. I don't like the ads. Can you change the placement/reduce the number/get rid of them? : The ads and their placement are forced on us by Wikia. D.I.T. Wiki administrators have no control over the ads, so complaining is useless. The best solution is to register an account (if you haven't already done so); this will eliminate the ads. Editing questions What is the difference between red, blue and light blue links? : Blue links point to existing pages (like Main Page), red links point to nonexistent pages, and light blue links are either external or interwiki links: in short, links that are supposed to point outside D.I.T. Wikia. What is the difference between "Appearances", "Sources", and "References"? : All official material is classified by Wookieepedia as either an "appearance" or a "source." "Appearances" are any material containing a plot. This can include everything from novels to short stories and comic books to roleplaying adventures and games. "Sources" are reference material that provides canon information, but does not have a plot, such as Essential Guides, roleplaying rulebooks and sourcebooks, and Character Encyclopedias. A particular item is either an appearance or a source, never both, although sometimes a source may contain an appearance. For example, many roleplaying sourcebooks, which are sources, may include a short adventure at the end of the book; that adventure, taken by itself, would be an appearance. : "References" are completely separate from appearances and sources and refer to the list of citations at the end of an article. These citations refer to superscript numbers like 5 scattered through the prose and identify from what material the immediately preceding text comes. In most cases, material used as a reference must still be listed as an appearance or source as well; the only exception is when a reference does not qualify as either because it is not official material. Keep in mind that the word "source" is often casually used as a synonym for references (this is evident even in the name of the policy that describes how to use references), so don't let yourself get confused when this happens. Where can I discuss pages? : Each page has a built-in comment section, where you can discuss edits on pages as well as the subject in question. For example, Mr. Stupid NoHead and Charity Hirz. Somebody reverted my edits, what should I do? : Generally, not revert to your version in turn. This can start a revert war (also known as edit war), which is seen as disruptive because it prevents other contributors from improving the same article. Instead, question yourself whether the revert was justified, look at the edit history for the reason given, and try to settle the case on the talk page. What is a minor edit? : A minor edit is an edit that it is so non-noteworthy that users monitoring the article can usually skip it. Examples are spelling and grammar corrections, corrections of formatting and template usage. Addition and omission of content, as well as factual corrections, are not minor edits and should not be marked as such. : If you accidentally marked a non-minor edit as a minor one, make a dummy edit (an edit that affects the source wikitext but not the output, like changing one space to two or vice versa), mark it as non-minor, and explain the problem. What is a semi-protected page? : Semi-protected pages are pages that can only be edited by registered users that have been registered for 4 days or longer. It is done to prevent pages from being vandalized by anonymous or very new users. Like full protection, it is only used in extreme cases. If full protection is a last resort measure, semi-protection can be thought of as a "penultimate resort". What is a fully protected page? : A fully protected page is one which can only be edited by administrators. Very few articles should be in this state: it is primarily reserved for frequently used templates, where vandalism or misguided good-faith edits can cause problems on multiple articles. It may also be used temporarily to forestall edit disputes. Community/political questions Can I become an administrator? : Administrators hold much power but also have much responsibility. There are a number of prerequisites for becoming an administrator, and whether or not a nomination succeeds largely depends on what other users think of you. Read WP:RFA for details. Who defines the policies? : The policies are determined by consensus: proposed new policies and changes are not approved until a decision that suits everyone or almost everyone is found. A discussion may start as a simple vote or even a simple suggestion or question, but usually, the end result is neither of the originally proposed options (in case of a vote), but rather some kind of fusion of different ideas. The process is often painful, but necessary. How can I contact an administrator? : Just as you would contact any other user: by leaving a message on their talk page. If you have no preference for a specific administrator, you can use the Administrators' noticeboard. I saw this term on D.I.T. Wikia. What does _____ mean? :If you encounter a word, acronym, or phrase used on D.I.T. Wikia that isn't clear to you (i.e. "revert", "fanon", or "redirect"), simply ask Beethoven4ever or SWLover2 and they'll probably know.